Master of Shadows (27 page)

If there was any friction between the two painters, or more likely a sense of rivalry, it was probably driven by Rubens’s budding relationship with Philip. For five years, Velázquez alone had been allowed to paint the king from life, a privilege extended to him by Olivares as a means of controlling the imagery of state. (Titian had been given this honor during the reign of Charles V.) The very pretext of Rubens’s stay in Madrid impinged upon that status, and Philip had every intention of taking advantage of his presence.

Widely traveled, well-read, adored by kings and queens, and an undisputed master of his art, Rubens must have appeared a romantic figure to the youthful Planet King, who had a keen interest in the
world beyond Spanish borders, a world he had never experienced firsthand. At the encouragement of his mentor, the count-duke, Philip had developed a genuine interest in the arts. He was a regular at Madrid’s two raucous public theaters, the Corral de la Cruz and the Corral del Príncipe, and was a patron of the great dramatists Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón de la Barca as well as the rival poets Francisco de Quevedo and Luis de Góngora. He was conversant in nearly as many languages as Rubens, and had even translated the work of the Italian traveler Lodovico Guicciardini, who in the preceding century dubbed Antwerp the marketplace “of all the universe.” His relationship with Velázquez testified to his interest (and good taste) in painting. If he thought the professional practice of that art was beneath the dignity of a member of his diplomatic staff, he didn’t think it base to take up the tools of that trade himself, as a hobby. Juan Bautista Maino, an artist and Dominican friar, gave Philip regular instruction in drawing. “The king takes great delight in painting and in my opinion is a very gifted prince,” wrote Rubens after a few months at court. He followed up that appraisal with a more nuanced assessment: “He is endowed with all the good qualities of mind and body, as I can affirm from my personal knowledge of him. If he were less distrustful of himself, and relied less on others, he would be equal to the most exalted rank, and capable of governing empires. But as it is, he is paying the price of his own credulity and the incapacity of others, and is the object of a hatred he has done nothing to deserve.”

The proximity of the artist’s studio to the king’s quarters, just a few rooms away on the main floor of the Alcázar, made it convenient for Philip to sit for the master. The two men talked amicably as Rubens worked, sketching the king’s spade-shaped visage, with its high forehead and jutting “Habsburg jaw”—a genetic deformity magnified over generations of inbreeding. Rubens made a series of
portraits of Philip, in various poses, some for the king himself, some destined for the infanta in Brussels. In early October, Rubens borrowed equipment from the royal armory and stables for an equestrian portrait commissioned by the king for his own use. Philip was aware of the magnificent equestrian portraits Rubens had made for Lerma and Buckingham, and he wanted that same grandiose treatment for himself. Rubens obliged, sitting His Majesty on a charging bay horse, with allegorical figures representing justice and faith hovering overhead and an American Indian, symbol of his extensive empire, off to the side holding a gleaming helmet. This Philip was every bit the symbol of divine authority, hardly the same man that Rubens described as “distrustful of himself.” Not surprisingly, the king was thrilled with it. Indeed, Philip was so pleased that he decided to install it opposite Titian’s
Charles V at Mühlberg
in the Salón Nuevo—displacing the equestrian portrait only recently completed for that very space by his favored court artist, Diego Velázquez. In a celebratory verse, the poet Lope de Vega called Rubens “el
nuevo Ticiano.”

That compliment was perhaps more appropriate than Vega realized. While Rubens was figuratively emulating Titian, he was also quite literally imitating the Venetian master. During his stay in Madrid, Rubens made copies for his own use of virtually every Titian in the city, both in the royal collections and in private hands, a total of more than twenty paintings. These were done in addition to the roughly two dozen entirely new compositions Rubens finished, meaning he operated at a pace of about one finished painting per week during his stay in Spain, not counting drawings and preparatory works. It was an astonishing rate of production, and all the more impressive given that he was without his usual workshop assistants (though he undoubtedly had some help) and his primary business in Spain was diplomacy, not painting. That he came down
with another debilitating case of gout during the stay didn’t help either, and if even that wasn’t distraction enough, one of his English patrons, James Hay, the Earl of Carlisle, had asked him to keep an eye out for shipments of perfume from the Indies. Rubens did that, too, tipping Hay off to a consignment of fragrant oils from Goa, arriving by way of Angola.

Through it all, Rubens somehow found time to make substantial alterations to the
Adoration of the Magi
, the large canvas he had painted in 1609 to celebrate the signing of the Twelve Years’ Truce. That painting, plucked from the walls of the Antwerp town hall and given to Rodrigo Calderón, had found its way into the royal collection after Calderón’s disgrace and execution in 1621. Rubens discovered the large picture languishing in a basement wing of the Alcázar reserved for the king’s use during the summer. When the treaty it celebrated concluded, the painting had become politically obsolete. It was not, however, beyond redemption, thanks to Rubens’s endlessly malleable allegorical language. With the artist campaigning for a new international accord, a painting in which kings come together to bestow gifts on a symbol of peace must have seemed relevant once again. Rubens, naturally, decided to resuscitate it, in the process extending the canvas both horizontally and vertically to give him extra space in which to work. Among his alterations was the insertion of a donkey looking away from the central action, perhaps a veiled commentary on those who turn their backs on the peace process. But the most curious addition was a figure sitting on a white steed at the right edge of the canvas. He wears a maroon doublet with a chain of gold draped over his shoulders and a sword peeking up from his hip—the accoutrements of a gentleman. It is, incontrovertibly, the artist himself, Peter Paul Rubens. If there was to be a treaty with England, surely he had earned his place in the picture.

RUBENS WAS READY
and willing to gallop off on his white steed, olive branch in hand, but a stream of bad news filtering in from abroad put all of Spain’s plans in jeopardy. The assassination of Buckingham alone had been enough to table negotiations with England. More troubling was the deteriorating situation in northern Italy. The death of Vincenzo II of Mantua (the son of Rubens’s erstwhile patron) without an heir had provoked an awkward free-for-all in the region, with Spain and Savoy opposing the strongest claimant, the French-backed Duke of Nevers. At stake was access to the critical military corridor, the so-called Spanish Road, that linked Spain’s Italian possessions with its holdings in the north. This combustible situation was tenable for Spain only as long as the main body of the French army was pinned down on the Atlantic coast, still engaged in its protracted battle with the Huguenot rebellion at La Rochelle. But by late September 1628 rumors had begun to spread that a truce there was imminent, and by the end of October peace had arrived. Those French troops were now free to move on to Italy.

Olivares had no good response to this development. His best soldiers were already in Flanders, and he couldn’t even afford their salaries—for those war funds, he was dependent on the Mexican silver fleet, due some time before year’s end. It was thus with some horror that he reviewed the note handed him by a page on a cool December evening, with the French envoy, Guillaume Bautru, already in his office. The count-duke grimaced, and Bautru surmised that the news must have been serious if it was to interrupt their meeting. He was right. The dispatches in Olivares’s rigid hands told him that the entire silver fleet—every last ship—had been taken by the Dutch sea captain Piet Heyn at the Bay of
Matanzas, on the northern coast of Cuba. Heyn escaped with every ounce of booty on more than twenty ships, in all more than 11 million florins’ worth of treasure and matériel, most of it belonging to the king. Perhaps the greatest insult was that the Spanish sailors had surrendered without firing a single shot. The implications of that debacle would be felt across Europe.

No great leaps of imagination were required to see just what was in store. Frederick Henry, the Prince of Orange, had been massing his army around ’s Hertogenbosch, in Spanish-controlled territory, for months, planning some kind of offensive. Now he had the means to prosecute war on a grand scale, using his enemy’s own funds against its depleted and underpaid army. A concerned Olivares turned to Spinola, his top general, who was still in Madrid, and still hoping against hope that the count-duke might see reason and make peace with the Dutch. Olivares ordered him to return to Flanders to retake command of Spanish forces. Spinola refused. The marquis remained adamant that a diplomatic solution was the only responsible way forward in the Low Countries, and would not leave Madrid without a plan that would keep Flanders from the horrors of both Dutch invaders and Spanish mutineers. Rubens was stunned by his friend’s insubordination, even if he agreed with him in principle. When, in April 1629, the Prince of Orange finally put ’s Hertogenbosch to siege, Spinola was still in Madrid.

The marquis would never return to the Low Countries. In his efforts to bring a peace to that region, he spent all of his political and physical capital. He was recalcitrant, but Olivares was no less stubborn. If Spinola would not go to Flanders, he could not stay in Spain. Instead, the count-duke shunted him off to Milan, to supervise recovery from another Spanish humiliation. Richelieu’s French troops, released from La Rochelle, had reached Italy, and their presence had forced the Spanish surrender of Mantua. The action
effectively dissolved the Franco-Spanish alliance that had been formed secretly in March 1626. That agreement had never been much more than a dead letter. In July, Spinola left for Milan, where he would take over as governor-general of Lombardy. Velázquez, anxious to visit Italy for the first time—perhaps on the prompting of Rubens—joined his retinue.

The trip represented an exciting new adventure for the thirty-one-year-old painter, but it was a sad finale for the marquis. Spinola died at the Castello Nuovo on September 25, 1630, a depleted man past his sixtieth birthday. When Rubens found out, a month later, he was heartbroken. “The only thing I can tell you is that it was caused by labors and anxieties too heavy for his strength and his age,” he wrote. “He seemed tired of life … In him I have lost one of my greatest friends and patrons.”

Spinola’s marginalization and ensuing death did not bring Rubens’s mission to a conclusion. If anything, the negotiations Rubens had done so much to champion now appeared a political necessity for a financially straitened Spain, if it was to fight wars in both Flanders and Italy. Following Buckingham’s assassination, Olivares made it a priority to secure assurances that England remained committed to a peace deal. Cottington, whose position at court had only grown stronger with the death of Buckingham, confirmed his sovereign’s positive intentions. In Brussels, the infanta received similar promises from Sir Richard Weston, the powerful lord treasurer, and passed them along to Madrid.

What was required was a trusted emissary who could be sent to England on Spain’s behalf. Rubens, of course, was the ideal candidate. While Spinola had experienced a rapid erosion of his political standing, Rubens had only seen his position rise. Olivares in particular found in him an astute and trustworthy political mind. Philip, the king who had once decried the participation of “a mere
painter” in diplomatic affairs, was similarly won over by the visiting artist.

Having thus settled on the painter as his representative, in late April 1629 Philip composed a long dispatch to his aunt Isabella in Brussels, notifying her that he was sending Rubens to London. Upon his arrival in the English capital he would be empowered to establish a temporary armistice, and to pave the way for the formal exchange of ambassadors between the two countries, who would subsequently conclude the negotiation of a permanent peace. Rubens himself was supplied with two sets of formal diplomatic instructions written by Olivares—a standard protocol for traveling emissaries. The first, “ostensive,” set was to be shown to his English negotiating partners. “Whenever the king of England shall send to Spain a person authorized to negotiate the peace, our king, in turn, will send someone to England,” it said. “As for the interests of the relatives and friends of the king of England [that is, Frederick V, the Elector Palatine], His Catholic Majesty [Philip IV], with the [Holy Roman] Emperor and the Duke of Bavaria, will do what he can.”

The second set of instructions was for Rubens’s eyes only, and outlined not just the above points but also several other responsibilities with which he was secretly charged. Principal among these was “to prevent as far as possible” an accord between England and France, rumored to be in the final stages of negotiation. Indeed, Cardinal Richelieu had taken definitive steps to outmaneuver his terminally equivocal Spanish counterparts. Successful campaigns at La Rochelle and in northern Italy had improved French standing on the international stage, and the cunning chief minister shrewdly reminded his English counterparts of the bonds of marriage between Charles I and his French bride, Henrietta Maria. He also made certain to note their shared interest in returning the Palatinate to English control—France had no desire to see unfriendly Habsburg
troops along its border. For Rubens, Richelieu’s aggressive overtures to England presented an enormous challenge. In order to secure Spain’s demand for peace, he would have to win over Charles I without having his efforts undermined by France’s notoriously devious and far more experienced foreign minister. Indeed, Richelieu was well on his way to cementing his reputation as one of the more adept schemers in the history of European statecraft.